Secondary distribution is deeply distasteful, and there are arguments over how much it may drive some of the supply side; but surely criminal acts that produce immediate harm are rather more serious than mere distribution of copies (especially furtive distribution, which, unlike garden-variety revenge-porn pic leaking is done as quietly as possible, rather than as part of a widespread harassment campaign).

While I'll grant child porn gets used as a scare tactic (e.g. the Australian proposed law wherein it would be child porn if the subject even looked under 18; talk about subjective), I do like seeing CP rings smashed like this.

However, IMO, it actually reinforces the lack of need for new laws, and ISP-based firewalls, etc. The tools are obviously in place, and were well-used in this situation.

360 months for this? He deserves far more. Anybody who deals in child pornography should be jailed for life, no exceptions. One of the worst crimes, really.

Aside from fff's comment, remember that prison is worse for child molestors (and I bet this includes those in just for child porn) than anyone else. Even the absolute scum of the prison system hate those people.

[Edit]Am I the only one that finds the sidebars and topic headings atrocious?

What's with the mustaches on these guys? A local radio host even coined the term "molester mustache."

As for people so concerned about incerceration costs, I'm perfectly fine with prisons being built as simply as possible with used mattresses in simple, unadorned cells. Come up with ways to reduce staffing. The prisoners could grow their own food. Lots of solutions to the cost issue if people could knife their ideologies to death once and for all.

Edit: So do the downvoters support the over priced prison systems or rigid ideologies? Both?

30 years is insane for such a crime, especially for someone without a criminal record. He is a pervert and needs to be punished for his action, but locking him up for the rest of his life (with taxpayer money) is not remotely proper.

You can get away with 2nd degree murder for less than a decade, he should get 6,7 years tops.

I know that while there are those who have reservations against long prison sentences for those who merely watch/possess child pornography, viewing and/or possessing child pornography remains prohibited in most countries and is punished with heft prison sentences. Most people should be smart in terms of obeying that law.

Plus, with what we can glean from the NSA spying scandal, there is no real privacy on the Internet. Privacy on the Internet is a delusion. Be careful of what you say and what you do on the Internet, for it could come back to bite you in the ass, even if the government doesn't arrest you over it.

Redacting the street name and house number is a bit of a waste of time if you're going to leave the postcode intact -- that's enough to narrow it down to about a dozen houses. Anyone wanting to burn the place down would only need to call into a local library and look up the names on the electoral roll to find out which was the right one to torch.

Aside from fff's comment, remember that prison is worse for child molestors (and I bet this includes those in just for child porn) than anyone else. Even the absolute scum of the prison system hate those people.

First, I'm glad the guy was busted and is going to prison. Second, this is what really gets to me. The prosecution, the judge, and everyone else knows what will happen to this man in jail. That means that on some level, they are complicit in the abuse. I don't see how this is right.

Also, I don't agree that you get to complain about the costs of incarceration. When you deprive a man of his liberty lawfully, you then become responsible for his care. That care costs money. If you deem that the cost is too much, then you must either provide humane care for less (if possible) or choose not to incarcerate as many people or incarcerate for shorter durations.

30 years is insane for such a crime, especially for someone without a criminal record. He is a pervert and needs to be punished for his action, but locking him up for the rest of his life (with taxpayer money) is not remotely proper.

You can get away with 2nd degree murder for less than a decade, he should get 6,7 years tops.

For what it's worth, our system tends to throw the book at people who choose to fight the charges against them and lose. Odds are if he had pled guilty and not gone to trial he would have gotten a substantially lower sentence. Not saying that this is right, but given the evidence against him choosing to fight the charges was probably not the best idea.

30 years is insane for such a crime, especially for someone without a criminal record. He is a pervert and needs to be punished for his action, but locking him up for the rest of his life (with taxpayer money) is not remotely proper.

You can get away with 2nd degree murder for less than a decade, he should get 6,7 years tops.

I'm not sure what the right sentence would be, but this isn't just a guy who downloaded some pictures off the 'net. He helped run a forum that existed for the purpose of distributing the pictures. He's pretty far down the list of people whose sentence I'd complain about.

That sentence is crazy long. Actual rapist and murderers do less time.

Society as a whole would be better served with a short (one to three year) sentence and then mandated treatment in a half way house. And, not one of the for profit ones that exist just to overcharge people and get them back in the system.

Treatment should be the preferred option for those who have not raped or otherwise directly harmed a child.

there's some credence to distributors and even just "viewers" creating enough of a market that their culpability is worth punishing. there's also some credence to the statistics of viewing and distributing leading to physical acts.

the truth is that the prosecutors, who generally are involved before the arrests, try to link it all back to the actual producers before they make the arrests. when they can't, or they're worried about the investigation becoming known, they try to make the arrests quickly and quietly and track down everything they can before it becomes known that they've made an arrest. they're also trying to get the arrested to flip on the producers... but sometimes they only have hours to make the link. after that, they're stuck with metadata and embedded data in the pictures, as well as any identifying features in the pics, to track down the victims and the producers. they keep extensive records on the victims.

for 30 years... i would imagine this guy refused to flip, destroyed evidence, warned others, and they probably have evidence they can't use in court that he's also a producer - might be why he didn't flip. (sorry, haven't read all the article yet, just the comments). so they threw the book at him, and they found a sympathetic judge (up until recently, many male judges seemed to take the "he's just looking" defense to heart, and the distribution angle didn't really get a lot of traction). i guess my point is - it's very likely he deserved the 30 years - more than it just being a publicized deterrent against similar behavior.

there's some credence to distributors and even just "viewers" creating enough of a market that their culpability is worth punishing. there's also some credence to the statistics of viewing and distributing leading to physical acts.

I often see this asserted, but there is very little evidence for it.

There is an equally valid argument that an alternative form of gratification will result in fewer cases of child molestation, and since very little scientific study has been done on the topic, we can argue until we're blue in the face and never reach an agreement. I would point out however, that the thousandfold increase in adult pornography available to the average person over the last two decades has not seen a significant increase in rape statistics. Why would child pornography be different?

I hope those investigators that have to investigate that data don't have kids.What i don't understand is why the smut on "the cache" was not used in the prosecution

I'm friends with a former California detective who investigated child pornography cases. He has children, and it was very difficult. I imagine investigators stay in child pornography groups for only so long before they get out (probably on par with human photo filters that work for Facebook, MySpace, etc). It requires a mental toughness that you don't find every day.

[First, I'm glad the guy was busted and is going to prison. Second, this is what really gets to me. The prosecution, the judge, and everyone else knows what will happen to this man in jail. That means that on some level, they are complicit in the abuse. I don't see how this is right.

It's not right. It's just another failing of the judicial system in this country, but nothing will be done about it because no one wants to be seen as having sympathy for murderers and molesters, and DAs like to be able to use that threat of prison brutality to extract plea deals from accused sex offenders, which gives them easy convictions to put on their record.

there's some credence to distributors and even just "viewers" creating enough of a market that their culpability is worth punishing. there's also some credence to the statistics of viewing and distributing leading to physical acts.

I often see this asserted, but there is very little evidence for it.

There is an equally valid argument that an alternative form of gratification will result in fewer cases of child molestation, and since very little scientific study has been done on the topic, we can argue until we're blue in the face and never reach an agreement. I would point out however, that the thousandfold increase in adult pornography available to the average person over the last two decades has not seen a significant increase in rape statistics. Why would child pornography be different?

I really wish more science were done on this subject.

What alternative form? And also what about escalation? In other words whatever substitute one comes up with will the person be satisfied with it long term, or need ever stronger stimulus?

there's some credence to distributors and even just "viewers" creating enough of a market that their culpability is worth punishing. there's also some credence to the statistics of viewing and distributing leading to physical acts.

I often see this asserted, but there is very little evidence for it.

There is an equally valid argument that an alternative form of gratification will result in fewer cases of child molestation, and since very little scientific study has been done on the topic, we can argue until we're blue in the face and never reach an agreement. I would point out however, that the thousandfold increase in adult pornography available to the average person over the last two decades has not seen a significant increase in rape statistics. Why would child pornography be different?

I really wish more science were done on this subject.

What alternative form? And also what about escalation? In other words whatever substitute one comes up with will the person be satisfied with it long term, or need ever stronger stimulus?

Well, the push in recent years to outlaw cartoon pornography that depicts those who "appear underage" seems ludicrous on first amendment grounds. And I'm not sure that I agree that escalation is a reasonable expectation in many cases, I haven't been on a date in a few years, but am unlikely to rape anyone as a result.

30 years is insane for such a crime, especially for someone without a criminal record. He is a pervert and needs to be punished for his action, but locking him up for the rest of his life (with taxpayer money) is not remotely proper.

You can get away with 2nd degree murder for less than a decade, he should get 6,7 years tops.

I'm not sure what the right sentence would be, but this isn't just a guy who downloaded some pictures off the 'net. He helped run a forum that existed for the purpose of distributing the pictures. He's pretty far down the list of people whose sentence I'd complain about.

But he didn't actually deal physical harm, which rapists and murderers do.

He also didn't participate in creating the actual content distributed - though making videos for himself is just as perverted, it's not the same level of legal offense.

I can't argue against using him as an example to make others hesitate at using child porn sites, though. Tough luck for the asshole.

The sentence range is looked up on a table, indexed by "Offence Level" (a value from 1 to 43, based on the severity of the crime), and a "Criminal History Index" (based on the offender's criminal history).

He was accused of helping run a major child porn distribution site. That sounds to me like "Trafficking in the sexual exploitation of a minor", which is covered in part 2G2.2 of the guidelines. The "base offence level" is 18 if convicted of 4 specific crimes, 22 otherwise. None of the 4 specific crimes sound like what he was accused of. So, base of 22.

There are modifiers. The ones which seem to apply based on the story are: Material involving prepubescent minor under 12, +2; Distribution for the receipt of a thing of value, but not money (like, other pictures), +5; use of a computer, +2; 600 or more images, +5. That's a total of +14, bringing the offense level up to 36. He was also in an "aggravating role", in that he was an "organizer or leader of a criminal activity that involved 5 or more people", which gives another +4 (+3 if he was a manager or supervisor, but not organizer or leader). Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and use the +3. That brings it up to offense level 39.

He had a criminal history. It doesn't take much to get bumped into Criminal History Category II or greater. The sentence range for Offense Level 39, Criminal History Category II is 295-365 months. For Criminal History Category IV (which could be as little as 4 misdemeanor convictions), the range is 360 months to life. Assuming this was a first conviction, the guidelines would be 262-327 months. If the courts felt his role as long-term admin on the site was equivalent to an organizer or leader, then even without his criminal history he would have gotten 295-365 months.

there's some credence to distributors and even just "viewers" creating enough of a market that their culpability is worth punishing. there's also some credence to the statistics of viewing and distributing leading to physical acts.

I often see this asserted, but there is very little evidence for it.

There is an equally valid argument that an alternative form of gratification will result in fewer cases of child molestation, and since very little scientific study has been done on the topic, we can argue until we're blue in the face and never reach an agreement. I would point out however, that the thousandfold increase in adult pornography available to the average person over the last two decades has not seen a significant increase in rape statistics. Why would child pornography be different?

I really wish more science were done on this subject.

What alternative form? And also what about escalation? In other words whatever substitute one comes up with will the person be satisfied with it long term, or need ever stronger stimulus?

Because that theory works so well for violent films, books, and video games? Actual criminal statistics would seem to indicate otherwise. Violent crime is at near record lows, yet there is plenty of violent media available.

So please point us to a well sited, peer reviewed study indicating that pornography ( of any sort) is different from violent media.

For me the most poignant section of the article is that the victims will never be able to truly put this behind them. They will live every day of their life knowing people are out there actively distributing photos/videos from humiliating and gut-wrenchingly painful experiences. That would be extremely challenging. I hope some of them have the strength to mentally rise above it, but I doubt all of them could.

You have got to love the subtle propaganda at the beginning of the article about how the valiant agent had to wait exasperated for a signed warrant.

Why not secure the warrant then assemble the team, Rambimbo? If you worried your take down team would "spook him" why not take care of the legality before placing a team onsite?

That's not propaganda, that's what happened you sexist twit.

While the "Rambimbo" is certainly over the line and uncalled for, I can see the greater point he is trying to make.

The warrant should have been gotten first, and then send in the investigators. The investigation was ongoing for months so there was no reason to think that it could not have waited one more day, or even till the afternoon.

I am just glad they did not do one of the classical no-knock 3 am raids and shoot his dog like is so common. They at least waited for daytime.